I agree that the biggest factor is software. For what I need my immediate hands-on-system (whether it's a desktop, laptop, netbook, or even pocketable) to do, the software selection just isn't a big deal. Web and/or email client, ssh, IM client, PDF viewer, (open|ms) Office, VNC viewer, ... that pretty much covers 95% of it. If that was the only consideration, I could use ANY platform and not care. The meat of what I do involves ssh and VNC to connect to servers, and I can use any Linux, *BSD, OS X, or even Windows as a thin client for doing all of that. In that environment, the immediate hands-on-system is just a gateway to other things.

And for that other 5% of things I do ... none of it requires Windows. In fact, it's mostly terminal level stuff, and the Windows terminal environment (even with cygwin installed) pretty much sucks a*s. Plus, there's the constant threat of viruses/malware/trojans/etc. (and even though there are threats against linux/bsd/osx unix platforms, the number of threats, and impacts of most threats, are pretty minimal and easy to contain), poor system software design, etc.

And ... if 95% of what I do is platform agnostic, why use an expensive one for those things? Certainly, OS X is weakest here, but it makes up for it by being the most polished and usable platform. Windows both raises the cost of the platform, and has poor ergonomics. Linux, even Ubuntu, may not have the greatest ergonomics, but it's _free_.


(and, that's part of why I would so very much like to see Maemo on a netbook -- best ergonomics/usability of any linux platform I've used; Ubuntu being a modest 2nd, and every other linux environments I've used being very VERY far behind those two)